Re: On autogenerated ChangeLog

[Behdad Esfahbod <behdad behdad org>]

On 04/20/2009 12:45 PM, Federico Mena Quintero wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-04-20 at 10:58 -0400, Dan Winship wrote:
>
> > So, actually, what exactly IS the use case of ChangeLog if there is git
> > history on one end and NEWS on the other? Who are the people who need
> > more information than NEWS gives, but who would not want to actually
> > check out the source tree, and what information, exactly, do they need?
>
> Very good question!
>
> I used to think that a ChangLog was very nice for "casual bug-fixers",
> who may want to fix a quickie bug without having a full clone, but
> maintaining those one-off patches is so cumbersome in the long run that
> you are much better off getting a full clone anyway.

Indeed.  These days I find it that just reading the ChangeLog comments is no 
where close to enough to find out *why* something is the way it is.  And 
that's assuming that you can find the ChangeLog entry to begin with.

I find myself doing the following more and more these days:

  - git blame, lookup the commit id of the line I'm interested in,

  - check the commit in full, including the patch, how things were, why they 
changed, and what may have been overlooked in that change.  Read bug history 
on any bugs referenced in the commit,

  - If this looks like a patch in a series, do a git-log and check 
surrounding commits,

  - Only then fix the bug and have confidence in the fix.

behdad


>    Federico